ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the issue of equal opportunities in the field of ongoing training, as an important element of advancement at work. It investigates whether women are given a ‘fair crack of the whip’ in terms of access to training courses and promotion, particularly into managerial positions. The chapter contains brief overview of the issue of gendered employment within the insurance industry, raising some of the particular problems encountered by women in that industry, but which are not unique to it. In the French companies, women were in the majority in all but one company and even there they made up 45 per cent of the workforce. The percentage of women employed in the British companies ranged from 20 per cent to 60 per cent with the exception of one Scottish company which stated that their workforce was 70 per cent female, and that 100 per cent of the part-time workers were women.
